FiveTacos
Registered User
From everything we've seen about Swayman, it certainly seems that he has the makings of a star goalie in this league.
In that case then back up the Brinks truck, and cap dump someone else to make it work.
The challenge is, to win with him at $8-9m, is probably going to take 2-3 years for the cap to come up and for him to establish himself as a #1.
If he's not established as a #1, then even a rebuilding team isn't going to trade good assets and put up huge money for him. Not when some of them already have promising young goalies at a fraction of the cost, or highly regarded prospects who are likely to break into the league in 2-3 years as it is.
Those 2-3 years are not what Boston is really looking at in terms of a contention window. They want to, and need to win now.
We're not talking about a promising 19 year old prospect who needs a few more years to hone his game. He'll be 26 in about a month. He should be helping you win now if he's the real deal.
It's perfectly valid for you to argue he's not worth 8-9m. If I believed he were good but not great, I'd also not want to pony up. But then don't try to sell him as "he'll be a star goalie in the future." Those teams would still be overpaying him for the next few years, and giving up quality assets for the privilege? That's not gonna accelerate anyone's rebuild.